The most clear-headed musical observers change their basic critical attitude when they start discussing the cultural and artistic contributions of what political terminology conveniently styles the “small nations,” or trying to record the growth of young civilizations. They then cease to judge the material at hand sub specie aeternitatis; not wishing to offend anybody, they sacrifice objectivity and choose a benevolent attitude instead. If a work of art produced by a young community or commonwealth pleases the critical contemporary, he takes a condescending stand of the see-what-they-can-already-do order and calls the work “promising” without taking the trouble to appraise the artist's or his work's intrinsic merits; if a creative effort seems hardly worth its paper or canvas the same critic will still say the artist and his people should be encouraged by way of a few benevolent words.